Business Owners: How To Get ISO Certified?

When it comes to your business, there must be quality assurance policies put in place.

It serves as the standard by which you create and produce anything and everything under the sun. Here In Taiwan, we pride ourselves on upholding quality and safety in our business dealings. These policies ensure the safety of production lines, digital and information safety, as well as end-point product testing. This global standard is known as the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO. When you have the ISO stamp, it tells your clients and your employees that they’re performing up to the same level and conditions that the SGS allows for. This gives proof and backing to whatever product you may put out. It means that, statistically, on the scales of risk management, your business process is sound and up to date. So how does one get an ISO certification? Here’s how.

Prepare

Like any sort of quality assurance certification, you have to prepare. You have to do your homework. Let’s take a laboratory for example. No matter how much an individual may know in a lab setting, the SGS Taiwan—the ISO certifying body, still needs proof. Training options are available in Taiwan for all sorts of ISO certifications. First, pick and choose what pertains to your business, and itemize the processes that either need change or updating. These training courses give you the tools to shape and implement what is necessary based on continuously updated SGS protocols. From there, your next step is an implementation plan.

Go Down the Checklist

Take your itemized list of processes to change or update, and go down the line. You may have to do this while production is still happening. This means that there will be a few days or weeks where one department has to put out that extra effort to adapt in real-time. It might slow down production, but one has to frame that as an “ISO preparation phase.” These are quite common during the certification season and will be made-up for during the post-certification ramp-up. Have all your departments submit their documents and compile them for the examination. Once you’re done, you can go on to the next few steps of the process.

Send In Documents For Inspection And Certification

Once you’ve got all your information, you send it to the local SGS Taiwan office or call for further instruction. Depending on the kind of certification you’re trying to get, there may be a secondary field inspection to see if everything is up to speed and in line with the documents that you sent in. The name of the game here is consistency. You’ve done your homework. You’ve prepared for the certification, and now it has to all lineup. If you can prove that, from idea to end product, you follow the line of thought as standardized by the SGS, you’re most likely going to get the certification.

Be prepared to be given notes. On a grading system, there may be a few minor tweaks they recommend. That’s fine. Follow through with those and send in proof of your adjustments. The whole process may be grueling, but it’s well worth it. Good luck!